South Florida Interfaith Worker Justice

SFIWJ provides a voice to educate, organize, and mobilize the religious community to serve low-wage workers in Miami-Dade and Broward counties. We dialogue with communities about religion’s historical roots and current policies for workers’ rights -- including the struggle for better wages, health benefits, working conditions, and the right to have a voice at work. We advocate for the rights of low-wage workers, the majority of whom are immigrants. Through our organizing efforts, workers’ struggles are transformed from just “bottom-line economics” into moral imperatives facing decision-makers. We also provide a spiritual uplift and moral foundation to workers in struggle.Our successes include helping to pass and protect the first county-wide Wage Theft Ordinance in the country and organizing and leading a delegation of 15 faith leaders to the Continental Group’s Headquarters, to urge them to allow their workers to unionize free of intimidation and threats of firings. SFIWJ has also partnered with University of Miami (UM) workers, faculty, students, and local community leaders, resulting in 410 immigrant janitors gaining the choice to organize, to earn a living wage, health benefits, and a permanent voice on the job.